Chaneling supermoms

What defines wonderful mothers? They're the ones we can't forget

What moms wantThe question: What do women want? Specifically, what do they want for Mother's Day?

Yes, it's that time again. The one day of the year set aside to honor mom. This year that's Sunday, May 13. Forget it at your peril.

I know that some men tell their wives that it's a contrived "Hallmark holiday." That is not a good strategy.

I also know men who tell their wives, "You're not my mother." That too is not a winning argument for failing to do something nice. She is the mother of your children. And what kind of example does that set for the kids? Let me answer that: poor.

So, with those lame excuses dispatched, let's return to the question I asked in a recent random survey of moms (and moms-to-be). It turns out that mothers are a selfless lot. No surprise there. Those I spoke with said that what they really wanted for Mother's Day was good health and the well-being of their families. But, when pressed, most came up with a thing or two that would make a welcome gift.

There's a chance, a pretty good one, that we'll never decide what makes a good mom.

Roughly 150 years of women holding jobs outside the home (remember those Civil War nurses?), and we're still fighting the should-they or shouldn't-they battle over working moms. We devour books about tiger moms and French moms and measure our styles against these archetypes. We scold moms for not breast-feeding, and then scold them for (gasp!) breast-feeding. We paint them as overbearing helicopters, even as we swap stories of A Mom Who Wouldn't Put Down Her Cellphone Long Enough to Play With Her Kid.

At the same time, no other figure is revered in our culture like Mom, particularly on the holiest of all (Hallmark) holidays: Mother's Day. We can all conjure a mom — maybe our own, maybe someone else's — who fed us, loved us and shaped us like no other force in our lives.

So while there's no broadly accepted definition of good mothering, we're surrounded — indeed, sustained — by examples.

"I recently was found on Facebook by a friend from elementary school and as much as I remember her, I remember her mother even more clearly, who was the first French person I think I'd ever met," says Homa Sabet Tavangar, author of "Growing Up Global: Raising Children To Be at Home in the World" (Ballantine Books). "Unlike so many immigrants in the early 1970s, this mom wasn't trying to blend in or give in to the pressure of her children to be like everyone else.

"Bernadette," Tavangar recalls, "always looked fashionable, wore light makeup and heels in the middle of the day, made gorgeous French dinners and never, ever spoke English with her children."

The moms who stay with us — in spirit or body or both — come into our lives when we're starting to figure out who we want to be. We often hear the word "selfless" attached to mothering, but those moms who stay with us find a way of honoring both themselves and the ones they love.

"My grandmother had that selfless piece," says family psychotherapist Arden Greenspan-Goldberg, "but you always saw this other dimension where she would just get up and dance. She was always singing. She had a tremendous sense of self, and you could see her strength from within."

That grandmother — Tillie — shaped Greenspan-Goldberg in countless ways, from her decision to practice therapy to the way she raised her own two children.

"I think she taught me that a loving mother is someone who is really looking out for their kids," she says. "Someone who's in their corner and helping them find their way and find their passion and become the best version of the person they're meant to be."

Greenspan-Goldberg says that as a child, she felt a deeper kinship with her grandmother than her mother. But as her mother aged and developed more of her own interests and pursuits, their bond deepened.

"It's almost like as she got older and more confident in her own skin, she was more able to be there for me as well," she says. "I always told my children: Love yourself from the inside out and don't try to be someone you're not. And I think that's a message I got from my grandmother and, later, from my mother as well."

Tavangar, the mother of three, now advises governments, businesses and nonprofits around the world on cross-cultural issues — a pursuit that was, at least in part, set in place in childhood.

"I was influenced by how exotic and glamorous and interesting (Bernadette) was, at the same time that she was friendly and funny and totally down-to-earth," she says. "Her example might have planted a seed for my own interest in learning French, in traveling and in becoming 'that' mom (who) was not afraid to be herself, while also remaining really interested in her kids and her neighborhood."

It was not the mother's French-ness, but rather her poise and pride in who she was that made such an impression. "There were two immigrant mothers in the neighborhood at the time, and my mother also carried, and continues to do so, herself with grace and was a great cook — even on weeknights," she adds. "So it may have also validated my own mother's different-ness."

That part about "a great cook" brings us to the not-small matter of food.

"When I was a child all the kids wanted to come to my house to play because my mom was so cheerful and kind," says Fran Walfish, author of "The Self-Aware Parent: Resolving Conflict and Building a Better Bond With Your Child" (Palgrave Macmillan). "She would always ask my friends, 'Are you hungry? Can I make you a steak?' Everything in our house was homemade."

"I often positioned myself," Tavangar recalls, of her French neighbors, "to play at their house before dinner so that I could see what they were having and possibly be invited to stay over."

And what are home-cooked meals, if not a perfect balance of selflessness and self-expression?